Mercenary camp

In addition to the various objectives each Battleground offers, you'll also be able to earn the allegiance of the Mercenaries who populate the world. To do so, you must first defeat the neutral mercenaries at their camp site, and then stand on the beacon nearby to capture them for your team. When defeated, they grant mercenaries that aid your team's minion waves, pushing against enemy forts. Determining the optimal time to capture a mercenary camp is crucial, and can be of great value when you need to distract the enemy team from capturing an objective.

Mercenary camps spawn at various points during a match. Once a camp has been captured, a respawn timer will begin, at the completion of which the mercenaries will reappear, ready for capture once more. Mercenaries do grant a experience when they're captured by your team.

Most Battlegrounds feature powerful, neutral creatures, known as Mercenaries. These Mercenaries can aid your team by advancing down the lanes and attacking minions and fortresses, and there are yet other kinds of helpful Mercenary Camps which offer different bonuses.

Mercenaries, such as Siege mercs, Bruisers, and Bosses can help sow confusion for the opponent when objectives become available. Timing a Mercenary assault in this way will give pause to enemies who will then need to choose between clearing the incoming Mercenaries, or contesting the objective. Additionally, splitting the opponents’ defenses can help in a big push against opposing fortifications, as well as give your team more vision, and more control over the map.[1]

Mercenaries are not won by simply defeating the camp. You must stand uncontested for a few seconds on the beacon that spawns after clearing the neutral mercs. If you don’t, a keen opponent can steal the camp away from your team.

Each camp must be captured in order to recruit the mercenaries found there. This is achieved by defeating the mercenaries themselves. Once a camp has spawned, any player can attack the mercenaries found there, and if they successfully defeat them all, a capture point will appear. By standing on the capture point uncontested for .75 seconds, the player will gain control of the mercenaries for their team, at which point the mercenaries will run to the nearest lane and spring into action for the team.

Note that either team may capture the capture point, even if the other team defeated the mercenaries. Sometimes a player may wait just out of sight of an enemy player who is attempting to capture a mercenary camp, and swoop in at the last second to kill the enemy player (who may be weakened from fighting the mercenaries) and then capture the camp for their own team.

On some maps, after the objective has been activated, mercenary camps would disappear, only reappearing after the objective has been neutralised. As the camp will not despawn if it is already engaged, teams can consider engaging camps just before the objective is activated.

Alterac Pass: Once the cavalry begin spawning. Camps reappear only after all cavalry have been killed.

Mercenaries also increase their statistics every minute, in a linear ramping fashion. "Wild" Mercenaries (The neutral, uncaptured ones) have different statistics from the captured ones. Captured mercenaries usually have more HP and Damage than the wild ones at the same time. Wild mercenary statistics update every minute, but mercenary camp that has been "pulled" will not update its statistics mid-fight. Resetting aggro on a mercenary camp will update its statistics to the current minute. Captured mercenaries have snapshot their statistics when the capture beacon becomes available, so clearing a mercenary camp then waiting on capturing the beacon will not yield additional statistics.

Mercenary Lord is a Generic Talent that both granted durability against enemy Mercenary Camps and empowered those that you claimed yourself. The damage reduction makes capturing mercs significantly easier, especially bosses which are affected by the damage reduction. The bonus damage only applies when you are within half a screen-length of the mercs, but can provide a huge boost in pushing power and presence, and is shown by the mercs growing slightly larger in size, but does not affect bosses.

You should never take any camp without having a reason for doing so. Obviously, it’s less risky to take camps on your side of the map (safe camps) than it is on your opponent’s side (not-safe camps). Sneaking enemy camps almost always ends in tragedy, so it’s in your best interest to refrain unless your team is on the same page.

Ask yourself this series of questions every time you consider taking a camp:

Does my team need me elsewhere?

Are we going to be able to push with this camp?

If I start this camp, am I in danger of being invaded by the enemy?

Do I need help to do this camp quickly?

Which enemy Hero am I anticipating will come to clear this camp?

Before level 10 you should not be doing camps if you do not have a member of the team soaking in every lane. You must have a person in each lane for every waking moment of the laning phase, because it is very important to capture as much experience as possible on the battleground as fast as possible.[3]

There are several types of mercenary camps, some only found on certain themed battlegrounds. Each is displayed with its own difficult rating, indicating the challenge of defeating the mercenaries found there. Some camps share similarities which give them an over-arching type, such as Siege camp, Bruiser camp, and Boss camp.

Siege giants are found in groups of 2 and can easily take down enemy forts from outside the structures' attack ranges. However, they are not as threatening up close, which makes them fairly easy for enemy heroes to defeat once in action.

Knights are 4 tanky units that are excellent at fortifying minion waves. They are found in groups with 3 frontliners and a single ranged "Wizard", who emits a spell armor aura to buff all nearby allied units, including Heroes.

The Fallen Shaman camp is made up of the Shaman himself with ranged attacks, and 2 melee dogs. When captured the Shaman will resummon his dogs when they die to help him, be it with significantly less health.

This camp consists of 3 Goliaths & 1 Raven. The Goliaths have a fast ranged attack, but do not out range the structures' attacks. The raven however, does out range structures as well as periodically sends Seeker Missiles to its current target dealing AoE damage.

These are the biggest, baddest mercenaries you can capture. Not all maps contain Boss Camps and there is only one Boss per camp, but that one Boss does a lot of damage with each swing while also possessing a huge amount of health. The high health and high damage of the Boss, however, means that you'll need multiple heroes to take it down. This makes you particularly vulnerable to ambushes while fighting a Boss, which is why their spawn location is known as "the throw pit", so only attack them when you have a level advantage or some opposing heroes are dead in order to make sure it will not be stolen from you. Once captured, Bosses auto-attack structures and can use abilities on minions and heroes (Archangel besides using abilities on minions and heroes, use auto-attack on minions too). A Boss cannot have buff abilities be cast on it. Also, they cannot be slowed or stunned, being unstoppable. If left unchecked, a Boss can literally break down walls and towers - even a keep - almost all by itself. Bosses cannot be captured by using abilities like "Bribe".

The Archangel fires an extremely high-damage stream of bullets at the closest enemy making and can fires a rocket dealing damage. The raw damage it deals is offset by it having less health that other bosses.

Grave Golems are large, tanky, high damage bosses that can easily push through enemy creeps and forts. They will alternate between a delayed slam on the ground dealing high damage and stunning, and a delayed root and DoT in a ranged AoE.

The Headless Horseman is a high-damage boss with attacks that cleave. He also launches his head at enemies leaving a DoT field below them. This is offset by him having slightly lower health that other bosses, but his arena is very out in the open. When defeated, instead of pushing the nearest lane, he unleashes a volley of flaming pumpkins that deals 4 damage to the enemy team's core.

The Ice Giants at the northern and southernmost points of Alterac Pass tend to mind their own business, but once provoked, they’ve been known to hurl deadly balls of ice and even stomp the ground in an effort to Slow or Stun their foes.

This Boss gorges a hero for 5 seconds with a 12-second cooldown, preventing them from taking any action. After gorging, the Boss creates a ring of fire that does periodic damage. When defeated, instead of pushing the nearest lane, the Mega Enforcer deals 1 damage to the enemy team's Core.

The Sand Golem is similar to the Grave Golem, with lots of health and high damage and even a delayed stun. It also periodically spawns a whirlwind that moves around randomly damaging and pushing heroes out of the way/prevents them from walking through that area.

Support Camps give you a healing totem that restores 40% maximum Health and Mana to nearby allied Heroes over 10 seconds. Support Camps cannot be captured by using abilities like "Bribe" and are Unstoppable.

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